Merchants Look To Future

The Prince George Street sidewalk reconstruction project is finally finished, and merchants there hope the road to recovery is a speedy one.

Meandering roadwork ran four months beyond deadline and cost the businesses tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales, but the owners say they just want to put the situation behind them and focus on getting people back on the street.

"It's done. It's open. The street is beautiful," said Fred Miller, owner of Prince George Graphics. "Let's welcome people down here and celebrate the thing."

The city spent $770,000 to put brick sidewalks, trees and Colonial-style streetlights on Prince George Street and part of Boundary Street to bring more pedestrians downtown.

As many as 3,000 students were expected on Prince George Street on Thursday for a block party sponsored by the College of William and Mary.

The Occasion for the Arts on Sunday will bring more people. Two new restaurants, A Chef's Kitchen and the Blue Talon Bistro, recently opened along Prince George.

"We weathered the worst of it," said Gerri Pratt, co-owner of Aroma's coffee shop. "But it's not over in terms of our business health."

The contractor, Techcon, was supposed to complete the Prince George Street portion in March, with the entire job done by June. It finished paving the streets last week. Stripes still must be applied to the pavement, but the orange-and-white construction barrels are gone, and the streets are open to traffic.

The Prince George Street Market closed after only a year in business, but the owners of the Hayashi Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Bar at Ewell Station plan to open a deli and sushi bar in its place this fall.

"Money lost is money lost. You don't ever recuperate that money," said Sharon Scruggs, owner of Webster's gift shop, which lost more than $55,000 in business over the spring. "With the new restaurants on the block, maybe we will get an increase over the norm for the fourth quarter that will help to compensate."

To help the shop owners recover, the city offered to spend up to $10,000 from Techcon's penalty fees to help them advertise. The city expects to collect about $15,000 from the contractor once the project is finished, City Manager Jack Tuttle said.

Mayor Jeanne Zeidler said the offer was a "good faith gesture" toward the businesses.

"They all went to it, as we did, knowing it would have some impact on the business because of the nature of what we were doing. But what none of us anticipated was the length of this project and how it dragged on and on and on," Zeidler said. "Some of their regular customers got discouraged, and we just wanted to invite people back down there."

Part of the invitation is more free time at the new Prince George parking garage. The city recently decided to make the first 30 minutes free, and there is a daily cap of $8. *